{"id":16,"date":"2007-08-25T14:42:01","date_gmt":"2007-08-25T18:42:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/scripts.mit.edu\/~espeed\/blog\/2007\/08\/25\/a-random-look-at-things-japanese-ks-house-mt-fuji\/"},"modified":"2007-08-25T14:42:01","modified_gmt":"2007-08-25T18:42:01","slug":"a-random-look-at-things-japanese-ks-house-mt-fuji","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/erekspeed.com\/blog\/2007\/08\/25\/a-random-look-at-things-japanese-ks-house-mt-fuji\/","title":{"rendered":"A random look at things Japanese (K&#8217;s House Mt. Fuji)"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I don&#8217;t really have any great stories to enthrall the masses with.\u00a0 That&#8217;s part of the reason I&#8217;ve not updated in awhile.\u00a0 The topics of the my ranting today shall include all sorts of interesting (not interesting) things.\u00a0 Including, Japanese nature, the place I&#8217;m staying, and maybe crime (not).<!--more--><\/p>\n<p>So, even though I&#8217;ve a lot of cities, seeing as how Japan is an volcano nation there is lots of nature as well.\u00a0 And there are plenty of beautiful views and it&#8217;s all great.\u00a0 However, if take a minor look closer, one thing I think you&#8217;ll find is that every where you go the nature has been retouched by human hands.\u00a0 Across entire mounts you&#8217;ll see the man made shoring to help stop erosion.\u00a0 Usually that&#8217;s what trees do, but they destroyed the trees making their highways and towns so the only thing left for them to do was to enclose all their mounts in mesh wire.<\/p>\n<p>It kinda makes you lose the moment.<\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s no secret that Japan has a problem with environmental preservation.\u00a0 Even the national parks of Japan are open to logging and the like.\u00a0 The business cartels that run Japan&#8217;s government (think our lobbying system only much worse due to the complicit acceptance of such a system) don&#8217;t let things which hurt their farms or anything else which furthers humanity (money) be encroached by that which is green.<\/p>\n<p>One of the problems of course is that, once the government decides something is good for the country, then the country usually agrees.\u00a0 Even if there was something a lot of people disagreed about, far be it for them to go against Japan&#8217;s national interest, those are the kind of feelings you keep to yourself (A country where you don&#8217;t even need imminent domain, wouldn&#8217;t our politicians love that).<\/p>\n<p>Of course as Japan changes so does it&#8217;s collective mindset, ironically (hopefully) into a more individualistic one.\u00a0 Now you have raising awareness of things like that.\u00a0 (Although, the bliss of the farm will no doubt always be augmented by that random lone vending machine.)<\/p>\n<p>A cool story is about how the last undeveloped island in Japan (Iriomote Jima) was saved from being developed by it&#8217;s residence.\u00a0 A truly cool, and pretty different thing to happen in japan.\u00a0 <a href=\"http:\/\/www.grist.org\/news\/maindish\/2004\/09\/29\/shaw-cat\/\">Here&#8217;s a link the initial hubdub<\/a>[grist.org], there&#8217;s a pending lawsuit which has frozen operations I believe.\u00a0 Look it up if you care.\u00a0 That link also has a cool picture of the yamaneko, which I think is cute.<\/p>\n<p>In other news, the place I&#8217;m staying is essentially indescribable in it&#8217;s awesomeness.\u00a0 I&#8217;m doing this trip on the cheap so hostels are the way to go, and I don&#8217;t have high standards.\u00a0 A soft bed, friendly people, and I&#8217;m set.\u00a0 So as of yet, I&#8217;ve been rating the places I&#8217;ve been fairly high.\u00a0 Now I feel like a jackass, because all those places should get 1 star reviews compared to the place I am now.\u00a0 K&#8217;s House Mt. Fuji.\u00a0 A bulleted list to include all the things which are awesome about it:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Huge.\u00a0 A spacious lobby, spacious rooms, spacious bathrooms, huge kitchen, crazy large dining room.<\/li>\n<li>Nearly brand new computers, not the old shit I was typing on in other places.\u00a0 But top of the line stuff.\u00a0 It&#8217;s kind of nice.\u00a0 Only 2 however, which is a downside.<\/li>\n<li>Real pillows, as of yet, I&#8217;ve had essentially stiff foam rectangles for pillows.\u00a0 I thought this was SOP, but for the first time ever, I have something resembling what I might use back home.<\/li>\n<li>Besides the Kitchen being big, it&#8217;s well equipped, has ample storage space, and is super clean.\u00a0 I walked into it and wished I cooked, just so I could use it.<\/li>\n<li>The rooms are some of the nicest I&#8217;ve seen.\u00a0 They all come with blankets at no special request, and every bed has it&#8217;s own reading light.\u00a0 And everyone gets a couple of hangers to put shit on, no doubt.\u00a0 Fairly awesome.<\/li>\n<li>The bathrooms are amazing as well.\u00a0 The sinks are all nice and clean, as well as having soap, which is a plus.\u00a0 The business part of the bathrooms is separated by sex, and in my version were complete with urinals, and western and japanese style pots.\u00a0 (Does anybody actually prefer the Japanese style over the Western?)<\/li>\n<li>This goes with the bathroom idea, but the showers are amazing.\u00a0 I&#8217;m used to a few cramped showers tossed into some room, but each shower here is in its own room, perfect for the shy, or the large.<\/li>\n<li>It&#8217;s right next to Like Kawaguchi.\u00a0 Like 2 minutes away.\u00a0 It&#8217;s almost hard to believe.\u00a0 Beautiful views of Mt. Fuji. (of course a bus to it if you feel like climbing it (I don&#8217;t).)<\/li>\n<li>A van that takes people to and from the station, also convenient for people with luggage who don&#8217;t want to walk.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>In any case, if you come to the 5 lakes region and don&#8217;t stay here you are out of your mind.\u00a0 All of this for 2500.\u00a0 Ridiculous.<\/p>\n<p>I don&#8217;t feel like writing about crime right now, so maybe you&#8217;ll get a taste of it later.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I don&#8217;t really have any great stories to enthrall the masses with.\u00a0 That&#8217;s part of the reason I&#8217;ve not updated in awhile.\u00a0 The topics of the my ranting today shall include all sorts of interesting (not interesting) things.\u00a0 Including, Japanese nature, the place I&#8217;m staying, and maybe crime (not).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[],"tags":[4],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/erekspeed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/erekspeed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/erekspeed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/erekspeed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/erekspeed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/erekspeed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/erekspeed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/erekspeed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/erekspeed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}